We arrive in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City, as bureaucracy and maps insist) during a monsoon that should be long over. It's only about 6km to the Caravelle hotel in the city centre, but it takes nearly an hour by cab in the tide of rush-hour traffic, the gutters in full flood.
This is a city on the move in every sense. It's not even 10 years since the communist government loosened the regime with doi moi, when trade restrictions were lifted and foreign cash started to pour in. Despite a century of war, Vietnam's resilient and youthful population is intent on leaving the past behind. People are interested in everything that smacks of progress, be it iPods, David Beckham or burgers.
Saigon's commercialism is unexpected: the neon signs, the noise and frenetic activity of the street, the smell of the drains and the stinging exhaust fumes.
Where is the languid elegance of the Indochine of old? Certainly not at the GIs' and hacks' watering hole, the Rex hotel. Once, the Rex bar had an allure; today it is a temple of kitsch. Gone is the edginess of a city existing on the back of a black economy, with its heady mix of war, women and opiates.
For authentic colour, head for the Ben Thanh market, with its stalls of Japanese gadgets, silk and lacquerware. Pause for a bowl of pho, noodles steamed in coriander-scented stock, which the Vietnamese eat for breakfast. Just avert your eyes from the pails of frogs being skinned alive, the semiconscious chickens dangling upside down. Then hail a cyclo and stop off at a nearby street that has the relaxed tempo of another era, where you can buy bric-a-brac and ceramics.
A day or two to get over the culture shock, to shop and acclimatise in the anodyne but luxurious Caravelle Hotel, is all you'll need before wanting to head out of the city.
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